It’s a known fact that art pieces are stolen worldwide and sold to the filthy rich ‘art-lovers’ at exorbitant prices. Initially, it was an act of individuals. Now, it has become ‘teamwork’. Some expert thieves steal the art pieces from the galleries, museums and from the personal collection of ‘art-lovers’. Some others sell it to the interested ones.
In the present era, some art auction houses have also emerged to do the selling part of the stolen pieces too though it is not their major scope of work. Mainly they sell the personal collection of individuals or something precious pieces owned by the institutions and organizations.
Pakistan is one of the countries ‘very blessed’ with thieves within the institutions. Many times we have heard about replacing the original pieces in the museums with the replicas done by the maestros. Replacing historic artifacts in the museum is done to keep the inventory intact. Otherwise there would have left nothing on the shelves of the museums.
The case of the National Art Gallery, being managed by the Pakistan National Council of Arts (PNCA), is different. It was never managed professionally. Even no one knew how many paintings and other art pieces were in the ownership of the NAG except its management until the catalogues of ‘permanent collection’ were published. No one knew that paintings were stolen from NAG until a woman member of the National Assembly raised on the floor of the house that Amrita Sher Gill’s painting was stolen from NAG and sold to someone in the USA.
More than ten years now, many inquiries were done to find out clues to the art thieves. But, no effort could succeed. Even FIA failed to nominate anyone. If nabbing an art thief is rocket science that FIA could not do it?
Any sensible person would say that a common thief does not know the value of a painting. Only a person who is an art expert or knowledgeable about the art.
It is said that about 200 paintings are still missing from the NAG’s permanent collection. Please add ten more art pieces into the missing ones that are ‘returned to legal heir’ of late Anwar Jalal Shemza by the present Director General PNCA Fouzia Saeed on August 17, 2020. Mian Ijaz ul Hassan’s letter states that the chairperson of the PNCA committee on Shemza paintings Mansur Rahi, an internationally recognized Pakistani artist, accorded the approval on August 19, 2020.
The PNCA Director General’s official stance is that it was pending for 35 years because of ‘gross negligence’ of the previous management of the PNCA. It was done after the PNCA Board of Governors (BoG) took a unanimous decision. She has several letters and a receipt to prove that the ten Shemza paintings were ‘loaned’ and were not returned to Mery Shemza, the wife of late AJ Shemza, despite repeated requests over three and a half decades.
Mian Ijaz-ul-Hassan, former professor of National College of Art (NCA) and the chairman of National Artists Association of Pakistan (NAAP), in his letter to top authorities in the government and Chief Justice of Pakistan dated October 17, 2020 refuted all the ‘evidence’ provided by Fouzia Saeed to the PNCA BoG to take the decision of her choice.
Mian Ijaz-ul-Hassan and well-known artist and PNCA’s former Director-General Naeem Tahir claimed to be the eye-witnesses to the 1985 exhibition of Shemza’s painting at Lahore where Mery Shemza gifted ten paintings to the National Art Gallery. Since then they were part of the inventory of the permanent collection.
All the PNCA director generals including Dr Khalid Saeed Butt, Raja Changez Sultan, Naeem Tahir, and Tauqeer Nasir have already refuted Fouzia Saeed’s stance of “repeated requests and letters of Mery Shemza to PNCA and foreign office to return the loaned paintings of AJ Shemza, her husband”. However, Jamal Shah has acknowledged that late lawyer Asma Jahangir wrote a letter to him in 2017 on behalf of her ‘client’ when he was PNCA director-general.
Jamal Shah has said “We searched every office file and the registers of inventories of art pieces but found nothing as ‘loaned’ but these paintings were counted in the permanent collection and their photos were published in the respective catalogues as well. So, PNCA wrote back to Asma Jahangir the situation and asked for the ‘evidences’ as if the paintings were ‘loaned’. We got no reply afterward. However, Shafqat Mahmood [Federal Minister for Federal Education and National Heritage and Culture] asked me to handover Shemza’s paintings to a woman in Lahore. He [Shafqat Mahmood] was extremely annoyed when I refused to do so.”
It seems that Shafqat Mahmood intentionally appointed Fouzia Saeed to complete the ‘task’ that was not done by the previous PNCA chief, and she did it in very haste by completing the ‘evidences’ that have been challenged by Mian Ijaz-ul-Hassan in his letter to authorities in the government and in the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
If the matter of Shemza’s paintings is not taken seriously and investigated thoroughly by a judicial commission of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, it would set a precedent for a new way of stealing art from the national art galleries and museums. The Judicial Commission should also probe the case of about 200 missing paintings. The culprits in both cases should be given the punishment which is prescribed globally for the theft of art treasures.
A case against the “illegal” appointment of Fouzia Saeed is waiting for almost three months in the Islamabad High Court for a date to be fixed for its first hearing. Perhaps, our courts never heard “justice delayed, justice denied” or intentionally delayed justice for influential elites.
